Protests grow, even in China’s rich south – Chris Buckley

Once a hamlet of rice and vegetable farmers, Taishi Village now lies near the epicenter of southern China’s export-driven transformation, and many of its 2,000 residents work in factories and live in two- and three-story houses.

But in recent weeks villagers have waged a bitter, sometimes violent, struggle with the police and officials that cuts to the heart of Chinese government fears that even amid an economic boom, complaints of injustice are rising and social unrest is spreading.

Since July, hundreds of residents of Taishi, on the southern fringe of Guangzhou, the capital of Guangdong Province, have protested the seizure of their fields for real estate, claiming that profits from land sales mostly end up in the pockets of local officials.